Asterisk is an Open Source, Private Branch eXchange (PBX) and telephony toolkit. It is a hybrid TDM and packet voice PBX and IVR platform with ACD functionality. It is, in a sense, middleware between Internet and telephony channels on the bottom, and Internet and telephony applications at the top. However, Asterisk supports more telephony interfaces than just Internet telephony. Asterisk also has a vast amount of support for traditional PSTN telephony, as well.
Asterisk supports the following telephony hardware: All Analog and Digital Interface cards from Digium, QuickNet Internet PhoneJack and LineJack, any full duplex sound card supported by ALSA, OSS, or PortAudio, any ISDN card supported by mISDN on Linux (BRI), The Xorcom AstriBank channel bank, and VoiceTronix OpenLine products.
Asterisk has become a popular VoIP PBX worldwide.It’s technology and protocol agnostic.
There is a distribution available called AsteriskNOW, a Linux distribution that installs the operating system, Asterisk, drivers for Digium telephony cards and IP phones and an open source administrative user interface called FreePBX.
Key Features
- Supports a wide range of video and VoIP protocols including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), and H.323.
- Supports most SIP telephones, acting both as registrar and back-to-back user agent.
- Serve as a gateway between IP phones and the public switched telephone network (PSTN) via T- or E-carrier interfaces or analog FXO cards.
- Caller ID.
- Voice mail.
- Conference calling.
- Includes ConfBridge, a high definition-capable conference bridge component that makes it easy to build stand-alone conferencing services or to integrate conferencing into other solutions, including IP PBX systems.
- Directories.
- Intercoms.
- Interactive voice response (phone menus). Prompts are included with English, Australian English, Canadian French, Japanese, Russian, Mexican, Spanish, and Swedish.
- Automatic call distribution.
- Scripting with extensions languages including AGI.
- Supports circuit-switching protocols such as ISDN and SS7.
- Codeoc translation API.
- Extended with its own API.
Website: www.asterisk.org
Support: Getting Started with Asterisk, GitHub, AstriCon
Developer: Digium, Inc.
License: GNU General Public License v2.0 / Proprietary
Asterisk is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| VoIP Software | |
|---|---|
| Jitsi | Innovative open source voice and video conferencing |
| Mumble | Voice chat application for groups |
| Jami | SIP-compatible softphone and SIP-based instant messenger |
| GNU Gatekeeper | Feature-rich project that implements an H.323 gatekeeper. |
| Fluxer | Instant messaging and VoIP platform |
| Kamailio | Build large platforms for VoIP and realtime communications |
| FreeSWITCH | Telephony platform for voice and chat driven products |
| Asterisk | Complete PBX system |
| Wire | Encrypted instant messaging client |
| Galene | Easy to deploy videoconference server |
| Linphone | Voice over IP softphone, SIP client and service |
| Janus | General purpose WebRTC server |
| Baresip | Modular SIP user-agent |
| OpenSIPS | Mature SIP server |
| GOnnect | Easy to use VoIP client |
| Calls | Make phone and SIP calls |
| Ekiga | VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME |
| qTox | Chat, voice, video, and file transfer IM client |
| Empathy | Instant messaging and voice over IP client |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.